Site Mobile Navigation

Briefly: Joint venture to provide Ukraine with natural gas

KIEV — Ukraine will receive up to 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from a newly created Russian-Ukrainian joint venture at a cost of $95 per 1,000 cubic meters through 2010, the state-controlled company Naftogaz said Thursday.

The deal is a victory for Ukraine, which locked in a lower price for imported natural gas than all other former Soviet republics except Belarus, a Naftogaz spokesman said. The natural gas Ukraine will receive will be a mixture of more expensive Russian gas and cheaper Central Asian supplies.

The joint venture, to be half-owned by Gazprom, was the centerpiece of a deal reached last month to end a pricing dispute between Kiev and Moscow that caused a temporary drop in supplies to Europe. (AP)

Harrods will pay £90 million over 10 years into the fund plus any additional amount needed to finance the deficit, according to an e-mailed statement from the union, which represents warehouse and distribution staff at the store's London operations. The change will affect 1,500 people, the statement shows.

Workers will pay into a new defined-contribution pension plan beginning with the start of the tax year in April, the union said. The maximum employer contribution will be "almost halved," it said.(Bloomberg)

Fed governor warns of banks' risky lending

WASHINGTON: A Federal Reserve governor, Susan Bies, said banks might be at risk from too much commercial real estate lending and risky mortgage loans that some home buyers may be unable to repay.

"There are certain rapidly growing business lines in banking operations that are placing pressures on risk- management systems," Bies said in a speech to law groups in Washington. Bies later said the Fed was trying to monitor unregulated hedge funds by looking more closely at the firms that provide them with brokerage services.(Bloomberg)

British retailers protest EU anti-dumping inquiry

BRUSSELS:More than a dozen top British retailers have protested to the European Commission that an anti-dumping inquiry on imported plastic bags, a central cost in their business, is flawed and should be scrapped.

Top executives from Tesco Stores, John Lewis, J. Sainsbury, Selfridges and more than 10 other retailers made the protest to the EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, in a letter dated Wednesday.

The commission has been investigating since last year whether plastic bags made in China, Malaysia and Thailand are being sold too cheaply in the EU.(Reuters)

Proposal encourages Bundesbank gold sales

BERLIN:The German Finance Ministry has drafted a law that would allow the Bundesbank to sell some of its gold reserves while ensuring that the proceeds would not be used to fill budget holes, a ministry spokesman, Stefan Olbermann, said.

The draft law would create a reserve fund for the proceeds of gold sales by the central bank. It would be up to the bank to decide whether to sell any of the gold it manages, how much and when, Olbermann said.(Bloomberg)

IRELAND'S businesses, trade unions and other groups metto negotiate the latest in a series of "social partnership" wage deals that have been crucial to the country's 10-year economic boom.(Reuters)

Ukraine's economywill double in six years as the country gains access to new markets and raises industrial output, Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov said in remarks broadcast by Ukrainian TV 5. (Bloomberg)